Garrison Preview Part 1—Your Base on Draenor

For our complete set of Garrison resources and guides; from basics to buildings, followers to missions, and much more, check out our Garrison Hub!

The long-awaited Garrisons blog has arrived! It covers followers, basic missions, and how to build your garrison.

While your Garrison's hub is still in your faction's zone (Frostfire Ridge or Shadowmoon Valley), you can build outposts in other zones that grant unique zone benefits and quests tied to your buildings!

The Wowhead team has been busy working on Garrison tools and database additions as well. To help plan out your building choices, we've put together a Garrison Calculator letting you pick and choose your buildings!

With the Garrison Calculator, you can:

Choose between Alliance and Horde layouts.

Click on the plot circles to select the buildings you want. After selecting a building, an image will appear on the map and a summary of the building and level will be displayed beneath the map.

Mouseover the building images to read tooltip descriptions for even more information.

Share your Garrison layout with a friend by simply pasting the custom URL to them.

Blizzard

At BlizzCon 2013, we shared a lot of our ideas for Warlords of Draenor’s Garrisons . We knew early on in development that this feature would strike a chord with long-time Warcraft players going back to the RTS days, as well as set the tone for the conflict with the Iron Horde. Since BlizzCon, we’ve been experimenting and iterating on Garrison concepts in our design laboratories, and we wanted to give you an updated preview of what’s to come. In this 4-part series, we’ll be giving you a much closer look at how Garrisons are shaping up and how you can expect to interact with them in Warlords of Draenor. For this first installment, we’re going to start off by painting a picture of Garrisons in relatively broad strokes, setting the stage to delve into the functional depth over the coming weeks in parts 2 through 4.

Establish Your Garrison While You Level

We want the process of staking your claim on Draenor to fundamentally shape your gameplay experience. Over the course of building your Garrison, we want you to face exciting decisions that will meaningfully impact how you interact with the world around you, fulfilling that fantasy of building and operating your own Warcraft base.The story you weave in Draenor is one of personal heroism, but your actions have a wider impact—part of your mission is to raise an army capable of toppling the Iron Horde, and the Garrison is integral to that experience. In terms of gameplay, that means you’ll be creating and strengthening your Garrison as you journey to level 100. While questing through Draenor, you’ll encounter opportunities to choose between different types of buildings to add to your Garrison. Each choice will have an impact on your leveling experience, influencing the quests you’ll have available and the zone-specific benefits you’ll unlock upon completion of your chosen structure.As an example, you can choose either the Лесопилка Уровень 3 or the Святилище гладиатора Уровень 3 while questing in Gorgrond. Not only does this choice unlock the design blueprints that allow you to add the building to your Garrison, it also lets you construct a military outpost centered around that building in Gorgrond. This plays an integral role in how you experience the zone, as you’ll be sent on quests specific to the building you’ve chosen and will receive a permanent benefit whenever you’re in Gorgrond. When you’ve completed constructing a building in a zone—and subsequently unlocked it for your Garrison—we want you to feel duly rewarded for helping to strengthen the forces in the area against the Iron Horde. To give you more of a feeling for the ideas we have for zone benefits, imagine summoning a brutish ogre bodyguard from your Святилище гладиатора Уровень 3 when in Gorgrond, or calling down artillery strikes from your Armory while in Talador. Our goal is for each zone to offer equally compelling alternatives from which to choose, and to provide you with plenty of powerful creatures to vanquish with your newfound powers.

Your Garrison wouldn’t be much of a base without some citizens to populate it—we call these brave souls followers. You’ll be able to recruit followers through a wide variety of methods—you can think of it sort of like collecting mounts or battle pets. And, like battle pets, different followers will have varying skill sets, including their own strengths and weaknesses. Some followers are unique and might even have names already familiar to you, while others will make for fine grunts to operate the saws of your Лесопилка Уровень 3, brew potions in your Алхимическая лаборатория Уровень 3, or craft magical components in your Enchanter’s Study. You can maximize the productivity of your Garrison by assigning specific followers to the posts where which they’re most proficient, such as Johnny Blacksmith, who will increase the output of materials from—you guessed it—your Blacksmith when assigned to work it. Similarly, followers more suited to combat would be ideal to send on missions, from which you can acquire an assortment of useful bounty.Missions will have variable difficulties, durations, and group size requirements, and some will play better to the strengths of particular followers over others. A wise commander will create the ideal team for a mission and send them off to reap the maximum rewards. Complete enough missions and your followers will level up, and once they’ve reached level 100, they can continue to improve their item levels, abilities, and traits. After you’ve sent a group on a mission, progress will continue whether you’re hanging out in your Garrison, battling through Blackrock Foundry, or even sleeping soundly logged out of the game.The buildings you create, NPCs you meet, and followers you recruit will ultimately determine who inhabits your Garrison, and you’ll see them going about their business each time you visit. You’re in charge of your own base and citizens, and you’ll even host leaders and other notable heroes from your faction to talk war strategy—among other things.We’ve also improved NPC AI (artificial intelligence) to further reinforce that “bustling town” feeling as you expand your Garrison. While Azeroth’s NPCs have traditionally been manually scripted to move along set paths for predetermined amounts of time, stopping at certain locations and then heading in new directions only as commanded, this behavior wouldn’t have sufficed for followers. A particular Follower might need to know on which plot within your Garrison you’ve built your Торговая лавка Уровень 3, for example, so he or she can make the trek to and from that specific location while doing your bidding. This improved AI also allows us to create more dynamic behavior, where NPCs can react to your commands or other situations happening around them. Want to have your subjects join you in a conga line around town? Thanks to improved AI and a new player emote, you can . . . and they will!

Fortify Your Fortress

Questing during the leveling process on Draenor will be the primary means by which you establish and grow your base, but the blueprints that allow you to construct different buildings can be obtained in a variety of ways. For example, you can find followers who will teach you blueprints, obtain them via drops from creatures out in the world or in dungeons, or earn them via faction reputation. At level 100, you can also purchase blueprints from a vendor for the buildings from each zone you originally didn’t choose. So, if you decide to build a Башня магов / Обитель духов Уровень 3 instead of an Armory in Talador, you’ll still be able to purchase the blueprints that allow you to build an Armory in your Garrison later on. From there you may decide you want an Armory instead of a Башня магов / Обитель духов Уровень 3 in your Garrison—or maybe you’ll find room for both!You’ll have access to 21 unique building types in all, each of which can be upgraded through 3 levels and then assigned specializations to maximize their effectiveness, and your Garrison can be expanded from its initial 4 building plots to a maximum of 10. If this sounds like too many big choices to make as you go along, don’t fret! You’ll be able to alter your building choices to suit your needs—and the needs of the war effort.The Garrison also grants you other powerful benefits. It will play an integral role in your professions on Draenor, giving your character access to more than just the normal two primary professions (we’ll cover that in more depth in part 2 of this preview series). In addition, amassing a powerful army of followers will maximize your chances of earning mission rewards like dungeon and entry-level raid loot for your character—but these will be tuned to feel more like bonuses rather than eclipsing your character’s direct accomplishments. We want there to be a ton of depth to the gameplay and customization of the Garrison, but we also don’t want to make players feel like they’re required to spend more time than they’d like laboring away on it after they’ve reached level 100. We recognize that there’s a fine line between introducing a system that provides cool bonuses and adding “chores” that feel necessary for cutting-edge endgame progression. To this end, players who prefer to level up mostly through dungeons or Battlegrounds will still be able to purchase the building blueprints that would otherwise be obtained through questing on Draenor.

The Last Line of Defense

Draenor is a savage and dangerous land. From the moment you set foot onto its soil, you will be hounded at every turn by the united clans of the Iron Horde. With few allies at your side, establishing a well-defended base will be one of the first orders of business. As the story unfolds, you’ll find that Garrisons are intimately integrated into every zone—whether you choose to follow the main quest path or just head off into the hills to explore, you will meet allies (and enemies) in every corner of the world. While your main fortress will always be in Долина Призрачной Луны (Alliance) or Хребет Ледяного Огня (Horde), you will establish Garrison outposts in Горгронд, ТаладорНагранд, and Пики Арака, all customized based on your building choices. Eventually, your forces will span the continent, and you will have an army capable of assaulting the fortified Iron Horde Foundry. Will your troops succeed? That’s entirely up to you, commander.

More to Come!

Thank you for joining us on this quick tour of your Garrison, and we hope you’ll come back for the rest—we’ve only just scratched the surface of this exciting new feature. In Part 2, we’ll take a much closer look at the buildings, including all 21 unique building types and their perks and specializations, as well as how professions are integrated. Stay tuned!

Armored Bloodwing and Blossoming Ancient go on sale

This week only, the Бронированный кровокрыл and the Цветущее древо are 35% off! So far the sale only applies to the EU, but previously it's always been the case that these sales appear in the EU then move over to the US later in the day. The sale makes the Blossoming Ancient £5.35 or €6.50, and the Armored Bloodwing £11 or €13. For the US, the pet is $6.50 and the mount is $16.25. It ends on June 3rd, so just under a week from now.

Azeroth Choppers Voting Begins Tomorrow

Blizzard has announced that the voting on which bike wins Azeroth Choppers will begin tomorrow. It'll start during tomorrow's episode, and remain opening until June 2nd. Voting begins a day later in the EU, on May 30th, but still ends on June 2nd.

The winning chopper will be made into a free in-game mount, but the fate of the losing chopper remains to be seen. It seems likely, given the wording, that it might still be in the game, but for a price. In order to vote, you'll need to go to AzerothChoppers.com and place your vote. Which bike do you think will take it?

Комментарии

Комментарий от Whytewolf

So our garrisons are essentially Warcraft. The original Warcraft games, this is actually really cool.

Комментарий от Salewow

on 2014-05-28T13:31:04-05:00

Warcraft 3 is coming back, i missed you.

Комментарий от PragmaticSoul

on 2014-05-28T13:43:47-05:00

Going to have to get my wife the Blossoming Ancient.

Not sure if I want the two-headed mount. Even at 35% off, that's still too much. If it was the bat mount, MAYBE...

Комментарий от JingleBang

on 2014-05-28T13:56:45-05:00

it is the bat mount

Комментарий от Oneknight1984

on 2014-05-28T14:12:50-05:00

I wonder if we will be able somehow fly or port or hearth or whatever between all our garrison outposts throughout Draenor. That would be cool to at least have a fly point at each outpost, that you'll have to connect to other fly points in the zone of course. Oh wait, there won't be any flying at all will there? Not even fly points?

Комментарий от PragmaticSoul

on 2014-05-28T14:23:46-05:00

I wonder if we will be able somehow fly or port or hearth or whatever between all our garrison outposts throughout Draenor. That would be cool to at least have a fly point at each outpost, that you'll have to connect to other fly points in the zone of course. Oh wait, there won't be any flying at all will there? Not even fly points?

It'd be nice to have a portal between the garrison and all the outposts. I hope it happens. Having a flight hub (with flight master connected to all the region's major destinations) would be welcome, as well.

They promised a LOT of flight masters, so we wouldn't miss flying. So it'll be "fly to most convenient location, then ground-mount to destination, do quest, back to flight master, lather, rinse, repeat." Why they couldn't just have "no fly" zones around major objectives, I don't know...

Комментарий от Lupin3rd

on 2014-05-28T14:39:29-05:00

I waited for you so long...

Комментарий от Rankkor

on 2014-05-28T15:19:13-05:00

FINALLY a tiny preview of HORDE garrisons.

For crying out loud, all we ever see, and hear are alliance-crap. There's dozens of screenshots, previews, datamined models, and more about the alliance garrisons, but so far we've only seen barely 1 tiny horde building. About time they start showing more.

Комментарий от PragmaticSoul

on 2014-05-28T19:57:38-05:00

it is the bat mount

Awesome! Bought one for me and one for my wife! :-)

************************

Back to the blog:

Pure speculation on my part (and I posted this to WoW Insider, as well).

I think that, as we get to each zone, we'll eventually be offered to have one of two buildings built. In the case of Gorgrond, you get to choose between the Lumber Mill and the Sparring Arena. And they provide you benefits (like the Klaxxi ones) in that zone.

And here's the big part: These buildings are built in your OUTPOST, not your garrison. But you end up with the blueprints, in case you want to build that building in your garrison.

So what you're deciding is, "what bonus do I want in this zone, and what plans would I like for my garrison."

Комментарий от Eido

on 2014-05-28T21:18:30-05:00

Dammit Blizzard, time to get out my credit card again...

Комментарий от CasCassCasch

on 2014-05-28T23:15:11-05:00

Something does bug me about garrisons. They're closer to the horde start zone than alliance or in the center? That's my only issue.

Комментарий от Rankkor

on 2014-05-28T23:40:53-05:00

Something does bug me about garrisons. They're closer to the horde start zone than alliance or in the center? That's my only issue.

what?

There's 2 garrisons. Horde one is in the Horde starting zone (Frostfire Ridge) and Alliance one is in the alliance starting zone (Shadowmoon Valley)

Комментарий от CasCassCasch

on 2014-05-29T00:26:25-05:00

Something does bug me about garrisons. They're closer to the horde start zone than alliance or in the center? That's my only issue.

what?

There's 2 garrisons. Horde one is in the Horde starting zone (Frostfire Ridge) and Alliance one is in the alliance starting zone (Shadowmoon Valley)

Sorry. I seen that after posting. I guess I shoulda did more than just skim the page. I thought there was only one and it was in Gorgrond.

Комментарий от regma

on 2014-05-29T01:11:16-05:00

"Come! We must prepare for the war ahead. And so let's us... uh.... um.. I know! Let us CONGA LINE TO BATTLE!"

If this is as good as I'm reading this. Then this should be fun.

Комментарий от walkman461

on 2014-05-29T01:32:18-05:00

As I expected. Alliance gets the nice work with/blue themed as always. And horde gets buildings with things they found on alliance's scrapyard... I mean, horde can build cool things too? Look at blood elfs for example. Or even undead, they made a whole underground city, and their other buildings aren't so crappy at all (just the dark version of alliance tho).

Комментарий от AngelicMew

on 2014-05-29T02:44:31-05:00

All of this sounds very cool, but I just wish the Garrisons were Account Bound. I get that it needs to be character bound because a alt can't start off with a fully built city on day one in Draenor, but I have 11 characters... That means 11 Garrisons... "Wel DUH you don't need to make each char have a Garrison."I thought that too, but I can't resist 11 mines/tanneries/enchanters/etc and the like churning out stacks of ore/dust/leather/etc. on lvl 3 and me flooding the AH with it.

This sounds like a micro manage nightmare that, when done right, will be pretty bad for economy...Or I'm missing something...

Other then that, my wallet is ready to be thrown at the screen as soon as the Collectors Edition physical copy is announced.

Комментарий от NuriCZE

on 2014-05-29T04:12:57-05:00

Will there be more skins for the buildings? I mean, it's nice to have Orcish buildings everywhere, but I'd much prefer for my Undead to have Brill-like garrison, while my BElf would have pretty, tall and thin towers...

Комментарий от AngelicMew

on 2014-05-29T04:21:15-05:00

Will there be more skins for the buildings? I mean, it's nice to have Orcish buildings everywhere, but I'd much prefer for my Undead to have Brill-like garrison, while my BElf would have pretty, tall and thin towers...

I think that Blizz would like to do this, but it would delay WoD's release if they have to make alot of the skins before release. I'm putting my hope on more skins after launch. It would make Garrisons fresh if a new BElf mage tower is released and you can buy the design with gold or something a few months down the line. Slowly release new skins to keep the idea fresh.

But we can only hope.

Комментарий от PragmaticSoul

on 2014-05-29T07:09:29-05:00

This sounds like a micro manage nightmare that

Do note that, at level 3, with a level 3 storehouse, your garrison can store up to 7 days' worth of supplies. So just get it set up so that the week's worth of supplies are staggered out. On Sunday, have 3 alts' garrisons needing tending. On Monday, the 4th. On Tuesday, skip (because of the maintenance, so you don't want to be rushed). On Wednesday... And so on.

Комментарий от JustMeDude

on 2014-05-29T07:14:35-05:00

The more I read on the garrisons the more excited I get. I do agree with those who wish to see more race-specific building styles, like the white, red and golden structures of the Blood Elves, the purple crystal decorated buildings of the Draenei and tinkering buildings of the Gnomes. Though I doubt we'll get to see those before at least 6.1, if even that early. We can hope though. :)

As I expected. Alliance gets the nice work with/blue themed as always. And horde gets buildings with things they found on alliance's scrapyard... I mean, horde can build cool things too? Look at blood elfs for example. Or even undead, they made a whole underground city, and their other buildings aren't so crappy at all (just the dark version of alliance tho).

That horde tannery looks nothing like it's made out of scrap from an alliance scrapyard. It's made out of hides, tusks and other animal parts, as well as metals all found in nature around it.

Also, the Undercity already existed before the Forsaken took it. They sure have changed the look and added their own touch, but I don't think the Forsaken have really built much at all, only took over buildings that belonged to Humans (including Undercity).